We shouldn?t ignore real science
Everybody who thinks he knows God’s exact opinion about the 2008 presidential election may as well quit reading. Particularly those with anger issues or elevated blood pressure. Because you haven’t got a clue, OK? The last time, everybody who believes GOP stands for God’s Own Party thought the deity had chosen George W. Bush. You’d think that would teach them humility.
Alas, the opposite has happened. As the Republican core shrinks, its ideology grows more anti-intellectual and authoritarian. Australian economist John Quiggin points out at CrookedTimber.org that this is only partly due to reality-based voters turning away from Bush’s failures. It’s also due to “the party’s success in constructing a parallel universe of news sources, think tanks, blogs, pseudo-scientists and so on, which has led to the core becoming more tightly committed to an extremist ideology.”
On many issues, the Republican right increasingly resembles a quasi-religious cult. GOP True Believers appear increasingly committed to an obscurantist worldview exalting “Christianist” theology over facts, superficially mimicking real science while rejecting its methods.
I first encountered this phenomenon covering Arkansas’s “Creation-Science” trial in 1981. Republican Gov. Frank White had signed a so-called Balanced Treatment of Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act mandating Biblical literalism in biology classes. Derived from the superficial concept of “balance” taught in journalism schools and practiced on TV shows like “Hannity & Colmes” — where there are two sides, and ONLY two sides to every question — it equated evolutionary biology with atheism, advocating equal time for God.
A coalition of religious leaders and teachers’ organizations filed suit under the auspices of the ACLU. Of course, biological science no more mandates atheism than do the rules of baseball, which also exclude the supernatural.
Creationists may be getting nowhere with scientists, but they’ve gotten good at bamboozling TV anchorcreatures and other trusting souls. A recent Newsweek poll found 48 percent of Americans rejecting the theory of evolution. Even 41 percent of Catholics dispute it, although the pope does not. Another study found that among 34 developed countries, the United States ranked 33rd in acceptance of biological science, just ahead of Turkey.
Where cult views get downright dangerous, however, is with respect to climatology. How has that become an article of faith? Simple: Al Gore helped make a movie about the threat of human-caused global warming.
The New York Times recently ran an article critiquing “An Inconvenient Truth” by rebutting a claim it never made: that Gore predicted a 20-foot rise in sea level, for example, while U.N. scientists estimated only 23 inches over the next century. But Gore’s hypothetical mentioned no time frame; it was based, moreover, on the possible melting of immense freshwater glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, which the IPCC report did not consider.
Nonsense like that discourages real scientists from entering public debate. But Americans need to hear from them. Ignoring reality is always dangerous; here, it’s become a national security threat. A practical people, most will resist cult beliefs when presented with expert information.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons can be reached at [email protected].